City of Chicago Landmark Designation Reports

STEPHEN A. FOSTER

HOUSE

12147 South Harvard Avenue
Chicago, Illinois

PRELIMINARY STAFF SUMMARY OF \HF§mi&!W*?

Submittecito the
Commission on Chicago Historical and Architectural Landmark*

November, 1rS8§,

STEPHEN A. FOSTER HOUSE
12147 South Harvard Avenue
Chicago, Dlinois

Architect: Frank Lloyd Wright

Date of Construction: 1900

Japanese art, architecture, and design have had a persistent influence in America since
the middle of the nineteenth century. Except for the years of and immediately after World
War II, this influence, which gained momentum after the 1876 Philadelphia Centennial
Exposition and after the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago, both of which
contained Japanese buildings and exhibits, has continued to today. Its most obvious im-
press has been on the design of the small American house of the last century, first in vaca-
tion homes and subsequently, as the size of single-family houses decreased, in year-round
homes. As Clay Lancaster describes this trend in his Japanese Influence in America
(1983), the seldom-used parlor turned into the multi-purpose living room, and the Japa-
nese house, with its open interior spaces suitable for several uses and its minimal furni-
ture, provided an inspiration and model.

The application of Japanese architecture and design principles is seen very clearly in
the work of the Prairie school architects, from the style of their presentation drawings to
the interest in fitting a building into its natural setting and providing appropriate land-
scaping to integrate nature and structure, to an open expression of the framing elements,
the use of latticed windows, and overhanging roofs with deep eaves. The Japanese influ-
ence on the Prairie school came most directly through the movement's progenitor, Frank
Lloyd Wright. Seeing Japanese buildings and other materials in Chicago in 1893 led him
to begin collecting Japanese prints and in 1905 to visit Japan for the first time. He was al-
so moved to design five buildings in 1900-01 that explicitly demonstrate the effect of his
study of Japanese architecture. Three of these five buildings are summer homes and only
one of the five is in the Chicago area. That building is the Stephen A. Foster House on
the Far South Side of Chicago in the West Pullman neighborhood, built in 1900 for the
newly married Foster, a member of the real estate syndicate developing West Pullman,

and his wife Almeda Hodges Foster. Its location, distant from the city center and from
concentrations of Prairie school buildings, has led some writers on Wright to overlook
the house, but it holds an important place in Wright's career and in the short list of his
surviving work in Chicago.

Stephen Foster and Stewart Ridge

Stephen A. Foster was born in Vermont in 1866. After receiving a law degree from
Harvard University in 1891, he practiced law in Boston for five years and came to Chica-
go in 1896. After a year in a law firm, he practiced on his own until 1906 when he served
one year as an assistant attorney for the Sanitary District of Chicago. That same year, he
was elected a judge of the newly established Municipal Court of Chicago. He returned to
private practice in 1910 and wrote a book on the Municipal Court and a compilation of
Sanitary District laws.

Foster was a director, and in 1900 vice-president and treasurer, of the West Pullman
Land Association, a syndicate of Chicago, Boston, and New York men formed in 1891 to
develop a tract of some 480 acres of land southwest of the town of Pullman. The associ-
ation began subdividing and improving the property in 1892, planning for three types of
development. Industrial activity was the core of West Pullman. A 1900 promotional book-
let, West Pullman and Stewart Ridge, Chicago, Illinois, 1892-1900, describes in detail the
already established manufacturing concerns and the prospects for the future. The associ-
ation explained that the area was well served by freight and passenger railroads which ran
to the Loop or to the South Side elevated train. Streets, sidewalks, and other infrastruc-
ture improvements such as water, sewers, gas and electric lines were installed to attract
industries of all types.

Around the industrial zone, land was platted for inexpensive residential and commer-
cial development. Homes could be built by factory workers or by a building company for
resale. This area, the promoters wrote, provides "every opportunity for cheap, good and
contented living." The security of an investment in West Pullman was assured because, as
the booklet states in bold type:

The laboring people living there own their own homes and are contented.
No strike or serious labor difficulty has ever been known in West Pullman.
The laboring people have their lodges and societies, but aggressive or of-
fensive organizations are unknown. There is not a union factory or shop in
the town.

The labor turmoil that had occurred in the nearby company town of Pullman in 1894
would not occur in a neighborhood of mortgage-paying homeowners, the association im-
plied.

When laying out their development, the association set aside the eastern part of their

land, which was heavily wooded and elevated above the rest of West Pullman, "exclusive-
ly for the finer class of residences." The association had established building restrictions
for all its lots according to their relative value within the development. The most stringent
were imposed on this most valuable property, named Stewart Ridge, in order to assure
buyers of uniform development and thus a safe investment. Potential buyers were also in-
formed that despite the remoteness of the location, the quality of local shopping was im-
proving and all the downtown department stores made free daily deliveries to West Pull-
man.

The association's plan for development was working well by 1900. West Pullman was
growing rapidly, its school had more than doubled in size, churches and a public library
were built. One of the Stewart Ridge houses depicted in the West Pullman promotional
booklet is the Stephen Foster home, built in the summer of 1900. In June of 1899, Fos-
ter had married Almeda Hodges of Elmhurst, Illinois. He was then living in the Kenwood
neighborhood, but as an officer of the West Pullman Land Association, Stewart Ridge was
a logical place in which to build a family home. Because Foster's business was downtown,
he may have felt that West Pullman would be a good place to spend summers but incon-
venient for year-round living. During the fall and winter, the Fosters rented apartments in
Hyde Park and in the summer moved to their home on Harvard Avenue. They maintained
this pattern of semi-annual moves until 1912 or 1913. In 1914, the Fosters were living in
Evanston and in 1915, they moved to Winnetka where Foster died in 1931.

In 1903, the Fosters' daughter Rachel was bom. In 1975 or 1976, Rachel Foster
Manierre revisited her old home for the first time in conjunction with a tour of Pullman.
She subsequently prepared a talk on her visit for presentation at a club meeting. Mrs.
Manierre explained that her parents selected Frank Lloyd Wright to design their house
through a family connection. In 1894, Wright had designed a house in Hinsdale for Mrs.
Manierre's aunt and uncle, the Frederic P. Bagleys. Mr. Bagley was an importer of marble
for use in construction, and Mrs. Manierre speculated that her uncle met Wright through
his business. She spoke of her parents' admiration for Wright's artistry and the great affec-
tion they had for their home, although she herself, hearing Wright lecture years later,
found him "old and pompous. . .yes, and boring and conceited too," and wondered if her
parents had found him difficult.

Frank Lloyd Wright and the Influence of Japan

In Frank Lloyd Wright to 1910: The First Golden Age (1958), Grant Carpenter Man-
son describes the Foster House and its barn, built "on a prairie in the remote regions of
southwestern Chicago then known as West Pullman" as the most important of the small
group of houses Wright designed with overtly Japanese detailing just after the turn of the
century. He goes on to say, "they belong neither to the transitional period [of the late
1890s] nor to that which followed; they are sports, in a class by themselves, but very re-
vealing." Wright may have first encountered Japanese architecture as a nine-year-old boy
visiting the 1876 Philadelphia Exposition with his family. When Wright first moved to

Chicago in 1887, he worked for architect J.L. Silsbee, an appreciative owner of Oriental
art as were many people at the time for reasons of personal interest or fashion. Wright
certainly saw Japanese architecture in 1893 at the Chicago fair. Japanese products were
displayed in several of the major fair buildings, demonstrating the nation's achievements
in agriculture and industry. A Japanese village was part of the amusement area along the
Midway Plaisance. But on Wooded Island in the main lagoon was the official Japanese ex-
hibit, a tea house and the Ho-o-den, or Phoenix Villa. This three-part building was based
on the Ho-o-do, or Phoenix Hall, an eleventh-century temple near Kyoto which was an
important milestone in the development of a native Japanese architecture (rather than
one based on Chinese and Korean styles). The interiors of the three pavilions were design-
ed to reflect three different periods of Japanese design and decoration. After the fair
closed in 1894, the buildings on Wooded Island remained standing as a museum and tea
garden until they were damaged by fire in 1946 and had to be demolished. As Clay Lan-
caster points out in The Japanese Influence in America, architects from all over America
saw these buildings during the fair, but Chicago architects continued to see them for fifty
years, and their greatest influence was on the architects of Chicago.

From 1888 to 1893, Wright worked for the architectural firm of Adler and Sullivan,
after which he opened his own office. He furthered his interest in things Japanese by
purchasing, and later dealing in, Japanese prints, developing an extensive collection by the
time of his first trip to Japan in 1905 for the purpose of adding to his collection. In 1906,
the Art Institute of Chicago presented Hirosige: An Exhibition of Color Prints from the
Collection of Frank Lloyd Wright, a display of 213 prints made between 1740 and 1820.
A second exhibition of his prints took place at the Art Institute in 1908 and a third in
1915 in the Fine Arts Building. In his introductions to the exhibits, Wright explains his
attraction to Japanese prints and design. These prints, he wrote, were produced as inex-
pensive entertainment for the common man and are democratic, both in subject matter
and in their intended audience. They represent "art not divorced from nature." The prints
have "a simplifying light, spiritual in quality [which] has come through them to unbur-
den the Western mind sagging with its sordid load."

Several magazine articles in the 1890s had pointed out the Japanese awareness of "the
value of commonplace materials in creating a pleasant environment," and that "restraint
heightens the effect of whatever accents are selected for a room," as Clay Lancaster
writes. Wright found an organic quality in Japanese design which reinforced his own de-
veloping ideas about what architecture should be. Principles such as an emphasis on the
quality of craftsmanship as an intrinsic, not an extrinsic, feature of design; simplicity and
the use of materials in their natural state; openness within the house and in the relation-
ship of the house to its site found a receptive place in Wright's thinking. He was also at-
tracted to specific details such as the use of deep eaves with light-colored undersides to
block the sun's glare while directing light to the interior; careful selection and placement
of a limited number of decorative objects within a room; and low furniture. What Wright
learned from Japanese architecture, according to Grant Manson, was "a highly provoca-
tive clue to a fresh concept of Western architecture: the interplay of solid structure with
unprecedented quantities of light and atmosphere." Wright found in Japanese art and

architecture a tradition that supported and expanded his own concepts, and in the Foster
House he explored these ideas.

The Foster House and Barn

Wright was not the only architect whose work in the 1890s showed some Japanese
influence. An Oriental feeling was apparent in the Shingle Style buildings of the 1880s-90s,
a style particularly popular in New England but also the style in which Wright built his
own house in Oak Park in 1889. Ground-hugging houses with prominent, sheltering roofs,
Shingle Style residences featured floor plans that, unlike the standard late nineteenth-cen-
tury residence with its sequence of box-like rooms, separated principal rooms with only
minimal partitions or with screens. The style takes its name from the wood shingles which
covered most or all of the exterior of these houses. After leaving Adler and Sullivan in
1893, Wright designed other houses in the Shingle Style, as well as in the more formal
Colonial revival style. At the same time, he was also working out his own unique style,
derived from his experience with Sullivan and his desire to find a style more appropriate
to the modern era and the Midwestern locale than these borrowings from the East and the
past. Wright's borrowings from the Far East were experiments that contributed to the de-
velopment of his architectural thought and practice and through him to other architects
whose work formed the Prairie school.

In its siting, plan, and composition, the Foster House exhibits features of the Shingle
Style as well as characteristics of typical summer homes, yet it clearly demonstrates the
creativity of Wright's architectural philosophy as it was then developing. The house and
its barn, a miniature version of the house, are located on a large corner lot with landscap-
ing on all sides of the structures. The gentle battering of the walls and the picturesque up-
ward curve of the roofs, based on the Japanese irimoya roof, covered in shingles and ac-
cented with dark wood trim express the relationship of the house to the ground and the
overall context of the landscaped site. The base of the building, eight rows of shingles a-
bove a dark sill, extends out from the main body of the house at either end to form the
entrance stair at one end and a porch at the other. A band of dark trim tops these rows of
shingles, emphasizing the solidity of the base and its rootedness in the ground.

Unlike most summer homes of the period, the Foster House did not have the typical
street-front entry set into a broad porch. Here the entry is located at the side of the
house, covered by a low roof with a screen of closely set narrow spindles on either side of
the stairs. The open porch was set at the opposite end of the house, its outer corners
marked by the same narrow spindles as the stairs. Glass doors lead from the interior of
the house to the porch, making the porch an extension of the interior space rather than
an applied appendage, tying together the inside and out-of-doors.

The interior plan of the house reflected the simplicity and lack of formality character-
istic of summer homes. Its combination living and dining room also reflects a flexible
room usage of traditional Japanese homes. This room, extending the width of the house

and opening onto the porch, centers on a broad brick fireplace with a pointed-arch open-
ing and a wooden mantel inset above the keystone. According to notes on the back of a
Foster family photograph, the woodwork was stained moss-green, the rough plaster walls
tinted buff in the Japanese manner, rather than painted, and matching the bricks of the
fireplace. The floor was stained a dark mahogany. In this photograph, the room is furnish-
ed with an assortment of furniture in various styles, and in one corner, on a shelf, is at
least one piece of Oriental pottery.

Six casement windows, set together in a band at each end of this room, admit consid-
erable light and by providing extensive views of the garden further connect the house to
its setting. The picturesque and Japanese atmosphere of the house and its setting begins at
the edge of the property. The path to the entrance of the house is marked by a torii, the
gate found at the entrance to Shinto shrines. Shinto is the indigenous religion of Japan,
and the torii may have evolved from a rope tied between two trees or posts to mark a
sacred site. Two posts, modified from the posts and roof of the torii, mark the entrance
to the driveway alongside the pedestrian gate. The driveway leads to the barn, now a
garage, which is a smallscale and simplified version of the house.

In his book Frank Lloyd Wright to 1910, written a year before Wright's death in
1959, Grant Manson wrote that:

Although the exact degree of Japanese influence on Wright as an architect
may never be determined, and may not be known even to Wright himself,
it is strongly indicated that "Japan" has been a decisive factor in his
growth.

The Foster House is a demonstration of this aspect of Wright's development as an archi-
tect. Combining elements of the popular Shingle Style, the fashionable Japanese, and the
traditional informality and picturesqueness of a summer cottage, the house illuminates
Wright's effort to find his own way in architecture. The Shingle Style came to Wright
through the early years of his career. He came to Japanese design through its sensitivity to
nature and its honest presentation of the products of nature. Although he designed only a
very few buildings with details directly derived from Japan, a Japanese feeling and sensibi-
lity is evident in all of his Prairie school designs from the period 1900 to 1914. Through
him, other architects such as Walter Burley Griffin, Marion Mahony, George Maher, Rich-
ard Schmidt, and all the other members of the Prairie school movement were touched by
the same sensibility. Clay Lancaster points out in the 1983 edition of his book that since
the first publication of Japanese Influence in America in 1963, Japanese-style buildings
and gardens have been built in many parts of the United States. The Chicago Botanic
Garden in Glencoe has included a Japanese garden within its developing complex. In
1981, the Chicago Park District reconstructed a Japanese garden on Wooded Island,
complete with a small pavilion. In landscape and other fields of design, the enduring ap-
peal of Japanese art and architecture in America is evident.

80

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JAPANESE INFLUENCE IN AMKKICA

TmI J»1.<«0 ^HCHlTtCT .p.o J(twi RlCO^O

§57. Elevation and
plan of the HOO-den or
Phoernx Villa, Chicago,
U. Kum, architect.
(The Inland Architect
and News Record.
December. 1892)

$58. Elevation of the
HOO-dO or Phoenix Hall
of the ByodO-m at Uji.
(Sansom. Japan, A
Short Cultural His-
tory. New York, 1943,
p. 12521)

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CITY OF CHICAGO

Richard M. Daley, Mayor

COMMISSION ON CHICAGO LANDMARKS

Peter C. B. Bynoe, Chairman
Irving J. Markin, Vice-Chairman
Thomas E. Gray, Secretary
John W. Baird
Marian Despres
Josue Gonzalez
Amy R. Hecker
David R. Mosena
Charles Smith

William M. McLenahan, Director
Room 516

320 North Clark Street
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(312) 744-3200